Booting off 2nd HD on Dell Studio 1745 Laptop

Thanks for checking, Brian.
Does BING work with Vista and Win7? (I have Vista on the laptop.)
Do you suppose that BING is *required* for Windows to boot from
external SATA HDs, so that just Windows' own boot manager wouldn't
work in booting from external SATA HDs?

*TimDaniels*

"Brian K" wrote:
Tim,

I'm a fast worker. I just ran this exercise to confirm my memory isn't faulty.

My external HD is 320 GB (eSATA). I resized the partition to 305 GB so that I had 15 GB of unallocated free space. I
restored my WinXP image into this space. A Boot Item was setup in BING with the Swap option enabled as the OS wasn't
on HD0. WinXP booted from the eSATA HD.

Easy. I have a whole series of backup images that I can use for tests. At present I have over 20 bootable OS on HD0.
Several WinXP, several Win7, several Linux, several DOS, etc. All independent, courtesy of BING.

Tim,

BING works fine with Vista and Win7. I don't use Window's boot manager so I
can't answer whether it can boot an OS on an eSATA HD. I'll bet BING could
boot an OS on a HD connected to your Expresscard. Try this. Boot from a BING
CD. If you can see your eSATA HD in Partition Work then BING will be able to
boot an OS on that HD.

Tim,

Off topic but TeraByte Unlimited have a script that lets you boot WinXP from
a USB external HD or a USB flash drive.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/tbo...eacf7543286703

See Additional Items in that page.

Interesting... Does BING reside on the PC's internal HD or on the eSATA
external HD where the OS to be booted resides? As I have vaguely been
able to understand from reading the NGs, the problem with booting from an
external HD is that the driver to enable communication with the external HD
lies in is in the part of the OS that must be loaded after booting the OS. IOW,
it's the old ChickenAndEgg problem. If BING resides on the internal HD
and if BING contains the eSATA driver to communicate with the external HD,
I can see how booting the OS from the external HD might succeed. In effect,
the BIOS just boots BING, and BING then acts as a BIOS to start the booting
of the external OS.

*TimDaniels*

"Brian K" wrote:

BING works fine with Vista and Win7. I don't use Window's boot manager so I can't answer whether it can boot an OS on
an eSATA HD. I'll bet BING could boot an OS on a HD connected to your Expresscard. Try this. Boot from a BING CD. If
you can see your eSATA HD in Partition Work then BING will be able to boot an OS on that HD.

BING installs into an 8 MB primary partition, usually on HD0. It makes use
of the Extended MBR, LBA-1 and beyond as well as the MBR, LBA-0. It contains
no drivers. It doesn't care if you have 1 or 8 HDs. BING can boot an OS on
any HD. During the boot process it "Swaps" the HD so that it appears as HD0
to the BIOS. Each OS has a Boot Item in BING where the intended MBR on boot
is recorded. So dynamically the MBR is changed for each OS booted. This
enables a BING controlled HD to have up to 200 primary partitions. But only
4 of these primary partitions are in the MBR at any one time. The remaining
partition data is stored in the Extended MBR.

With BING you can hide OS from each other so there can be no cross talk.
Unlike the Microsoft boot loader, BING doesn't require shared booting files
on HD0. The OS are independent. So you can remove an OS without affecting
the others.

Thanks for the details, Brian. BING certainly has many capabilities
that Windows's own boot manager doesn't have, and I wonder if
Microsoft actually prefers its boot manager to be so limited.

When you installed the WinXP that you boot from the external
HD, did you install it there on the external HE originally, or did
you install it somewhere else and then transfer its image to the
external HD? If the latter is the case, one could transfer multiple
images to multiple HDs and then use them with multiple PCs. :-)

*TimDaniels*

"Brian K" wrote:

BING installs into an 8 MB primary partition, usually on HD0. It makes use of the Extended MBR, LBA-1 and beyond as
well as the MBR, LBA-0. It contains no drivers. It doesn't care if you have 1 or 8 HDs. BING can boot an OS on any HD.
During the boot process it "Swaps" the HD so that it appears as HD0 to the BIOS. Each OS has a Boot Item in BING where
the intended MBR on boot is recorded. So dynamically the MBR is changed for each OS booted. This enables a BING
controlled HD to have up to 200 primary partitions. But only 4 of these primary partitions are in the MBR at any one
time. The remaining partition data is stored in the Extended MBR.

With BING you can hide OS from each other so there can be no cross talk. Unlike the Microsoft boot loader, BING
doesn't require shared booting files on HD0. The OS are independent. So you can remove an OS without affecting the
others.

Tim,

That WinXP had been installed to my HD0 a few years ago and imaged
immediately after installation. It is my test image.
I would never install an OS to anything other than a HD seen as HD0 at the
time. After installation you can move the HD to HD1, HD2, etc position. Or
you can restore the OS image to HD1, HD2, etc.

You mentioned using HDs with different computers. In general that won't work
as the OS has drivers for the particular hardware on which it was installed.
You can make the HD boot by installing storage drivers for the new
computer's controller (the OSDTOOL can do this) and then you have to
manually install drivers for the different hardware. So don't get the idea
that you can easily plug your eSATA HD into different computers and expect
it to work.

OK, then, it seems that Microsoft's somewhat crippled boot manager
isn't to protect itself from using the same copy of a Windows OS on
different PCs.

Besides using BING, though, I wonder if some manufacturer's Expresscard
for eSATA can be used to boot from an external SATA HD. BTW, I still
haven't heard back from the rep at Silicon Image's sales office in Los Angeles
regarding whether their SiI3132 chipset can be used to boot from external
SATA HDs. I'd expect that they'd be crowing about it if it were possible.
I'll give them a couple more days before calling them again.

*TimDaniels*


"Brian K" wrote:
That WinXP had been installed to my HD0 a few years ago and imaged immediately after installation. It is my test
image.
I would never install an OS to anything other than a HD seen as HD0 at the time. After installation you can move the
HD to HD1, HD2, etc position. Or you can restore the OS image to HD1, HD2, etc.

You mentioned using HDs with different computers. In general that won't work as the OS has drivers for the particular
hardware on which it was installed. You can make the HD boot by installing storage drivers for the new computer's
controller (the OSDTOOL can do this) and then you have to manually install drivers for the different hardware. So
don't get the idea that you can easily plug your eSATA HD into different computers and expect it to work.

Tim,

Does that Expresscard have its own BIOS? My card does. I don't know whether
it is essential for what I've been doing.

Dunno. I googled the SiI chipset, and saw retailers listed for Expresscards
using that chipset, but I wasn't able to find a telephone no. to call, so I tried
calling the SiI office in Silicon Valley and got the usual directions to call their
distributors - who don't seem to have anyone in their offices who know. Until
I hear otherwise, I reason that since the capability to simply boot Windows
from an external SATA HD using an Expresscard would be such a break-through
for laptop owners, and since the card manufacturers aren't listing that capability,
it doesn't exist, yet.

*TimDaniels*

"Brian K" asked:
Does that Expresscard have its own BIOS? My card does. I don't know whether it is essential for what I've been doing.